Pacific Heights in the Spotlight

As always, theFrontSteps is open to new contributors and writers joining us, so if you think you have what it takes to blog (doesn’t take much), give us a shout and let us know. This comes to us from Arrian Binnings, via his new blog Inside SF Real Estate. We found it quite good (void of most Realtor spin, and generally informative) and have asked him to write a column for us (hence the full content version, rather than just a link). What say you, the readers? Good stuff?

Pacific Heights. Mmmmm, what an incredible part of our City. Just imagining it conjures up images of huge mansions, gloriously landscaped yards, jaw-dropping views, and:

Standard Pac Heights TP Roll

Seriously though, we wanted to take out our San Francisco micro-market magnifying glass and see what condo prices are doing in the area. Are they up? Down? Major bubble burst (aka, Bubblicious)??

Well that’s exactly what we set out to do, and here’s how we did it.

First, we looked at Median Sales Prices for condos in Pacific Heights, dating back to the year 1995. All sales are per MLS. We capped each year at October 20th, so we could include 2008 and get an even comparison (something about saying apples to apples just drives me crazy). As you might expect, we left out Single Family Homes, TICs, Lofts, and Stock Co-Ops.

Here’s the tale of the tape:

Pac Heights Condo Performance Since ’95 – Click to Zoom

Prices have steadily increased over the 14 year history. A dip in ’01-’03, and another dip this year. Let’s take a look at those appreciation rates. The three year rate is 106%, the five year rate is 130%, and the seven year rate is 147%. Not too shabby.

And how about the most expensive condo sale this year? It was at 2190 Broadway #9W, which was listed for $3,495,000 on 5/23/08 and closed escrow just 39 days later for a whopping 143% of the asking price… a solid $5,000,000. That put it at ~$1,563/square foot, also the high for the year in Pacific Heights (for condos).

And how about the cheapest condo this year? Well that honor belongs to 2001 Sacramento #9, which sold for $345,000 back in February after just 20 days on market. 2001 Sacramento is just across from Lafayette Park… a great location. The unit sold for ~$862/square foot and is an approximately 400 square foot studio condo.

2001 Sacramento is the lowest condo sale this year in Pac Heights.

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3 comments

Appreciate the fact that this analysis was provided w/o bias. Pretty interesting. Would be interesting to see the same analysis for NYC/Las Vegas/Miami/Chicago. Maybe we can get some sister blogs/sites to participate / coordinate?

Great minds thinking alike! In the fog of economic and real estate crises and headlines, it’s good to get granular. I’ve been doing some of the same thing (back to Jan 2005) by MLS district on my site, but with homes rather than condos. My conclusion is that the tonier districts are holding up better than the others, which makes sense given the credit crunch.